I have compiled a short paper venturing into the content and source analysis of social news websites – you can find it on the “Papers” section of this blog. I plan to present the paper at the 2009 Conference on New Media and Information in Athens. Abiding by the regulations set by the organizing committee of the conference, I had to shorten the paper considerably, which meant the omission of some, probably important, but at least interesting, topics.

For example, I could not present the findings about the perceived bias of Digg, Reddit and Newsvine (or their respective communities). Even though the reliability of this study of bias was quite low (Krippendorff’s alpha between 0.45 and 0.6 for the tested variables), I still think it has some important findings, so I plan to write a shorter post about it (if you’re familiar with these sites, it probably won’t come as a surprise to know that considerable degree of pro-Obama and contra-McCain bias could be observed).

Apart from that, I’m starting to read the book “Hearing the Other Side – Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy” by Diana C. Mutz – there is always new things to add to the theoretical background of the whole study it seems.